Thomas Larson is the author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative, Swallow Press / Ohio University Press, 2007. His book is the first of its kind to evaluate the dramatic rise of the memoir in the last twenty years and to explore the craft and purpose of contemporary memoir writing. Four months after publication, The Memoir and the Memoirist entered its second printing.

Larson also writes personal essays, memoir, nonfiction, and literary criticism. Since 1999, he has been a contributing writer for the weekly San Diego Reader where he specializes in investigative journalism, narrative nonfiction, and profiles.

For the San Diego Reader Larson has written more than thirty-five cover stories. Among these are a true-crime tale about the cold-case murder of the publisher William Thompson; a profile of the conservative political writer Dinesh D’Souza; the end-of-life tale of Mark Twain’s daughter, Clara Clemens, in San Diego; a feature on pit bulls, sympathetic to their point-of-view; an expose about a Mexican girl sold into sexual slavery in San Diego county; a profile of socialist author Mike Davis; articles on the molecular origin of life, the personal motivation industry, and San Diego’s 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown; plus a profile of the renowned psychologist Ken Druck, who offers grief support for parents who have lost children.

Larson is a regular book reviewer for Contrary Magazine online. In 2008, new memoir writing and essays are coming from New Letters, Tampa Review, and Cadillac Cicatrix.

Larson’s memoir writing includes "Freshman Comp, 1967," from the Anchor Essay Annual: The Best of 1997, edited by Phillip Lopate, Doubleday. This piece is taught every semester in the writing program at the University of Missouri. His personal writing has also appeared in the Potomac Review, Chicago Reader, Cimarron Review, Hawaii Review, the San Diego Reader, Amazon.com/Shorts, and The Cream City Review, where he won the Editor’s Award for Nonfiction.

Critical essays on memoir and autobiography have appeared in Boulevard, The San Diego Union-Tribune, AWP Chronicle, El Paso Review, and other publications. "Skull and Roses—Reflections on Enshrining Georgia O’Keeffe" came out in Southwest Review, and a critical re-reading of the unexpurgated "definitive edition" of Anne Frank’s diary appeared in Antioch Review. In 2002, The Gettysburg Review published his essay, "Almost Beautiful: A Life of Nathanael West."

Larson leads workshops and lectures on memoir throughout the United States and facilitates private memoir-writing groups. He lives in San Diego with his partner Suzanna Neal.